THE NEED OF THE... 

<y.i\*u Century 



The Need of the 
Twentieth Century 



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JOHN J. O'RORKE 



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A paper read before 
The Social Science 
Club, New York....... 

APRIL 27th, 1901 



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PRES6 OF L. H. STARKEY, 
20 ROSE STREET, NEW YORK. 



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•■*.JD, of C. Pub. Lib. 

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CHAPTER I. 

THE NEED OF THE 20TH CENTURY. 

During the dawn of the century days, the papers 
are full of mystic speculation^ about the 20th Century. 
They discuss the 20th Century woman, they ponder 
over the 20th Century man, they wonder what he will 
do, and what he ought to do. But most of all, they 
puzzle themselves over "what is the greatest need of 
the 20th Century." Their theorizing is as valuable as 
newspaper theories generally are, but the sages of the 
dailies never hit upon what is the greatest need of the 
20th Century. They discuss the coming wonders of 
electricity, wireless telegraphy, and submarine telephony, 
lightning-like transportation by land and sea, air ships 
and balloon carriages; all this is admirable, but to oper- 
ate them there will be need of men. The greatest need 
of the 20th Century will be MEN — men who "get 
there" ; men who do their work as well as they can. The 
modern phrase, "get there," may be accepted as a slangy 
paraphrase for "whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do 
with all thy might." How many men do that? Every 
boy has looked forward with proud anticipation to the 
day when he should be a man. To him, man seems a 
God-like creature, masterful, strong, many-handed, 
quick-witted, obeyed by women and children, and even 
by lesser men. But how often the thoughtful boy, 
when he arrives at manhood, finds that his beliefs were 
but visions ; that his idols have feet of clay ; that the men 
around him are but boys grown tall; that they have the 
weaknesses of boys; that they have the same propensity 
for dodging duty ; and if he become an employer of labor, 
he speedily finds that he must have time-clocks, that the 



men under him must be watched, much as a schoolmas- 
ter watches his boys. Large establishments employing 
thousands of men are forced to make the most minute 
rules concerning the bodily habits of their employees, 
otherwise they find, that under pretense of attention to 
the corpus curiae, the men will cause their employers to 
lose thousands of dollars a year in stolen time. It was 
Charles Reade who wrote of an epitaph left half finished 
by the stone-cutter, "The British workman would leave 
the d in God unfinished, when the clock struck the hour 
for beer." This indictment is not leveled at lazy men, 
but rather at careless, shiftless, ignorant, vicious and 
worthless ones. Over the lazy man, it is useless to 
worry; he was born tired, and he will die so. Besides, 
he rarely does harm to any one but himself. He is too 
lazy; he is the opium fiend of the Occident. Like his 
listless brother of the Orient, his brains are doped, but 
the doping dates from infancy, or beyond, and there is 
no antidote. Let the lazy man pass. He has his uses. 
He is frequently picturesque. He fills up the landscape 
for industrious artists, and when he dies, he makes bet- 
ter fertilizing material than his industrious brother, be- 
cause he is generally fatter. Let him rest in peace. It 
is not then of the lazy man, but of the careless man, that 
I would speak, and in the one word "careless" are lumped 
all the qualities included in the term "worthless,'' 
"shiftless," "dilatory," "ignorant," "half-hearted" and 
"vicious." For the careless employee who wrecks a 
great business enterprise, or who kills, drowns, burns, 
or maims human beings by his lack of thought and care, 
is more than careless ; he is vicious. Yet scarcely a week 
passes that we do not hear of some such calamity, be- 
cause, forsooth, "he made a mistake." If the 20th Cen- 
tury man would do his work as well as he can, there 
would be no such mistakes, for there is hardly an ac- 
cident in our complex civilization which cannot be at- 



tributed to carelessness or to crime, sometimes to both; 
for the lack of care which permits crime, is itself a crime. 
When two trains collide, when a wash-out ditches a 
train, when a burned bridge wrecks a train, when a 
steamship's cylinder-head blows out, when a boiler ex- 
plodes, when a commercial engagement is forgotten, when 
a certified check is lost, there are none of them acts of 
God ; there is always some human agency at fault ; it may 
be the division superintendent; it may be the track in- 
spector; it may be the inspector of steel; it may be the 
steamship engineer; it may be the superficial merchant; 
it may be thd sight-seeing clerk ; but there is always some 
man to blame. There was faulty inspection, flaws in 
work, neglect in supervision, or thoughtlessness in ac- 
tion, which should have been detected by the trained 
mind, eye, or ear of the man with serious purpose or 
earnest and deliberate intent. In the long chapter of ca- 
tastrophes, mechanical and commercial, there are always 
men to blame. It was the Psalmist who mused, "I said 
in my haste, all men are liars/' The same duplicity, igno- 
rance, carelessness, shiftlessness and viciousness runs 
through the ranks of all conditions of men. The man 
who knows life seldom complains of its unfairness; it is 
the cold justice of life that he learns to dread. When 
Philip D. Armour was asked as to the spirit of the In- 
stitute which he endowed, he said: "Its religion will be 
1 6 oz. to the pound, but undenominational, and it makes 
no difference to me whether its converts are baptized in 
a soup bowl, a pond, or the river," and Mr. Armour was 
a success, even as the greatest exponent of what has 
been aptly termed "Canned Life." 

To support my structural thought, I find it expedient 
to draw, at least superficially, upon certain departments of 
action and suggestion, which may be said to vitalize the 
human entity in proportion to his utilization of these 
mental and physical resources. I may state unqualifiedly, 



that these powerful influences in moulding character, and 
shaping success, are the common heritage of mankind, 
to which every grade has access, and which, as a matter 
of fact, are most freely availed of and utilized by what 
is described as the "lower strata" of society. In our in- 
tellectual life the conservatory is re-enforced from the 
woodland and the forest, just as in the strenuous com- 
mercial life the executive energy draws its activity and 
inspiration from the new-born vigor of the workshop 
and the bench. The clerks to-day become the bosses of 
to-morrow. I have neither the ability nor the inclina- 
tion to undertake a flight into the lofty realm of the 
higher criticism. I shall endeavor to keep out of the 
clouds, realizing that my feet are ever glued to the 
ground, and that I address myself to this subject as a 
practical man, talking to equally practical plain people. 



CHAPTER II. 

RELIGION. 

One of the greatest needs of the 20th Century, is a 
deeper religious belief. I do not necessarily wish to im- 
ply an acceptance of any form of ecclesiasticism, as I rec- 
ognize that the circumscribed propaganda of a faith 
which announces limitations, is opposed to the broad prin- 
ciple of enlightened and progressive human understand- 
ing. Disbelief is the Dead Sea fruit of philosophy, while 
an attachment to spiritual and metaphysical fundamentals 
emphasizes the soundest thought of the age. "The very 
law that moulds a tear and bids it trickle from its source, 
that law preserves the earth a sphere, and guides the 
planets in their course/' Hollow and blatant scepticism 
is one of the most corrosive influences of our time ; it un- 



dermines constructive mentality, and hurls personality 
into a vacuum of doubt and disorder, which can only 
culminate in intellectual insolvency. No man who be- 
lieves in himself can be utterly without faith in the uni- 
verse; and in surveying the field of investigation, the 
human entity without fundamentals is a man without a 
country. Principles and measures stand for much in the 
eternal verities; while forms are but the tinselled relic 
of a barbaric past. True Christianity had its birth in the 
utmost simplicity; it belongs to no age or race; it has 
existed for all time and in all races. Solomon says, "The 
souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and there 
shall no torment touch them." Even admitting that the 
Bible is without what is called Divine inspiration, as a 
whole it is the most stupendous work of practical phi- 
losophy which the world has produced; it must be 
judged in its entirety without accentuating flaws, 
which are culled from its text and distorted to suit the 
baser motives of captious critics. It is the testimony of 
the ages which have preceded us, and in its general 
adaptability to our social system of to-day, it is as the 
torch of civilization; like the sun, it has spots upon it, 
but by the various conflicting sects, which build their 
confidence of the present and their hope of the future 
in its transcendent doctrines it is being triumphantly 
borne along from time to eternity. The organ loft is 
too much in evidence in the modern church. Chris- 
tianity as a continuous, theological performance, is per- 
haps featured too extensively, and the pulpit has not 
escaped the taint of selfish commercialism; but a trusty 
band carry the word along, even at the expense of per- 
sonal sacrifice and in defiance of public obloquy, for 
"when can man die better than facing fearful odds for 
the ashes of his fathers and the temples of his gods." 
Forever to pull down and scatter, and never to build 
up and perfect, cannot be the final purpose of society. 



We need a broader spirit of toleration; it is incon- 
ceivable that a man born in the faith of Confucius, 
Gautama, Zoroaster, Mahomet or Isaiah, who lives the 
best life he knows, shall be differentiated from the fol- 
lower of the Nazarene in the Kingdom of Heaven. By 
his works ye shall know him ; the man who takes good 
care of his family, respects his obligations, and culti- 
vates the attributes of love, affection and justice in his 
relations with his fellow men, and the community, as 
they are understood and practiced according to the rec- 
ognized ethics of moral law, is the personification of 
true and wholesome religion; he expresses the highest 
ideal of creation, and forever points the way to better 
things; he is the most eloquent preacher, as he lives the 
life. We are striving for a higher moral development 
in religion, and we are reaching it; "as he thinketh in 
his heart, so shall he be." Religion should be a strength, 
guide and comfort, not a source of intellectual anxiety 
or angry argument. "The letter killeth, but the spirit 
giveth life." He needs no other rosary whose thread 
of life is strung with the beads of love and thought. 
"Truth is the highest thing that man may keep." 
Light and love cast out fear. For, if all that is bad be 
eliminated from modern Christianity, there remains 
something of priceless and eternal value; take away 
everything which reason and conscience condemns, and 
you have the religion of conduct. The so-called Chris- 
tian Church has spent the best of its energy in discuss- 
ing subjects which are almost unintelligible, and alto- 
gether unpractical. "A new commandment I give unto 
you, that ye love one another." Adaptation to environment 
is life; want of adaptation is death. It is a fact of 
nature, it is the law of the universe. What we need in 
the 20th Century, is to look the almighty of false- 
hood and disbelief in the face, and tell him that his evil 
is not good. In the conflict of religion and science, I 



venture to say that the two antagonists, on emerging 
from their respective provinces into the broad plane of 
philosophy, should learn to respect their common rights 
and interests, and not imagine that either can claim the 
whole field against the other. It is true that the re- 
ligionist should recognize before him an immense mass 
of undiscovered facts, theories, hypotheses, which are 
the fruit of two thousand years of research, which stand 
upon foundations of proof that cannot be shaken, and 
are raising into a superstructure of knowledge too vast 
even to be misconceived. It is time, too, that the sci- 
entists should cease to ignore that vast body of truths, 
doctrines, dogmas, backed by evidences which have been 
accumulating for nineteen centuries, under the most 
searching criticism, which have more than convinced the 
great master minds of the past, and which are mount- 
ing every hour with cumulative probability toward moral 
certainty itself. In a spirit of progress and liberality the 
20th Century will certify to the marriage of science and 
religion, and the offspring will be truth, eternal, infinite. 
We shall inevitably cut loose from the untaught human 
blunder of deifying the great unintelligent material en- 
ergy of nature, which has led to much mischief in all our 
religious concepts. It is better, morally, to regard nature 
as but rudimentarily intelligent, and the human intellect 
as the highest fruit of nature's long effort to live and grow 
in knowledge. We are getting away from the old night- 
mare of Semetic dogma, which for centuries has misrep- 
resented the earth as originally cursed and humanity as 
damned. If there is an aspect of nature more manifest 
than another, it is the aspect of vast, limitless opportunity, 
the sense that everything is possible, possible even to frail 
pericellular man, if he can only secure the factor, TIME. 
Heaven is simply the paradisation of earth. There seems 
to be in all men in proportion to their understanding a 
conviction that there is in all human things a real order 



and purpose, notwithstanding the chaos in which at times 
they seem to be involved. Full as it may be of contradic- 
tions and perplexities, this obscure belief lives at the 
very core of our spiritual nature. The profligate who has 
ruined his health or fortune, may learn before he dies 
that he has lived as a fool, and may recover something 
of his peace of mind as he recovers his understanding, 
but no miracle takes away his paralysis, or gives back to 
his children the bread of which he has robbed them. 
"The fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children's 
teeth are set on edge." Every man is the architect of his 
own character, and if to the extent of his opportunities 
he has lived purely, nobly and uprightly, the misfortunes 
which have fallen on him through the crimes or errors 
of other men cannot injure the immortal part of him. 
The religion of the 20th Century requires that men must 
control their animal passions, prefer truth to falsehood, 
courage to cowardice, justice to violence and compassion 
to cruelty. What does an ascertained imposture deserve, 
but to be denied ? "All religion/' says Gibbon, in describ- 
ing the age of decline and fall, "are to the vulgar equally 
true ; to the philosopher equally false ; and to the statesman 
equally useful. The present tendency to relax in religion 
is not ultimate, but due to the diversity of opportunity in 
dogma, which the collective thought of the age is patiently 
and profoundly sifting, gradually separating the wheat 
from the tares. The fate of religious dogmas and politi- 
cal theories is connected with economic changes rather 
than speculation. Religion, to survive, must stand the 
utilitarian test of practical adaptability to the social ex- 
istence, of fully developed mental and material life. The 
school of to-day, with all its shortcomings, is a greater 
factor in moulding and consolidating religious thought, 
than the organized church. The moral, or religious 
laws of our being execute themselves through the instru- 
mentality of men, and in those great movements which 



10 



determine the higher life of nations through many 
centuries, the stronger side, it seems to me, has uni- 
formly been the better side, and stronger, because it has 
been better. Goodness is not always synonymous with 
happiness. The most perfect man who ever trod this 
planet was called the "Man of Sorrows." If happiness 
means absence of care and inexperience of painful emo- 
tions, the best securities for it are a hard heart and a 
good digestion. Laws which exist, whether we acknowl- 
edge them or whether we deny them, will have their way, 
to our weal or woe, according to the attitude in which we 
please to place ourselves toward them. Moral law is in- 
herent in eternity, while the law of gravity is but a prop- 
erty of material things; matter and all that belongs to 
it, may one day fade away, and "like the baseless fabric 
of a vision, leave not a rack behind." Those who first 
broke the yoke of what called itself the Universal Church, 
were in general as little willing to permit difference of 
religious opinion as that Church itself. But when the 
heat of conflict was over, without giving a complete vic- 
tory to any party, and each church or sect was reduced 
to limit its hopes in retaining possession of the ground 
it already occupied, minorities, seeing that they had no 
chance of becoming majorities, were under the necessity 
of pleading to those whom they could not convert for per- 
mission to differ. It is accordingly on that battlefield, 
almost solely, that the rights of the individual against so- 
ciety have been asserted, on broad grounds of principle, 
and the claim of society to exercise authority over dis- 
sentients openly controverted. In the minds of almost 
all religious persons, even in the most tolerant countries, 
the duty of toleration is admitted with tacit reserves. 
This reluctant attitude is being tempered in our time by 
the influence of broad and true liberalism. Religion has 
enfranchised itself from the ambition of a hierarchy, seek- 
ing control over every department of human conduct. 



n 



The beliefs which we have most warrant for have no 
real safeguard to rest on but a standing invitation to the 
world to prove them unfounded. The man who stifles 
criticism or opinion which may censure or differ from 
him, announces his own infallibility, and places himself 
outside the pale of mental jurisprudence. No sane per- 
son's idea of excellence in religion, or conduct, is that all 
should think alike, or do absolutely nothing but copy one 
another. We might well ask, 

To whom hast thou told Thy secret? 

On whom is Thy grace poured out? 
Whose lamp will direct my goings? 

Whose word will resolve my doubt? 
Shall I turn to the sects and churches, 
That teach mankind in Thy name? 
But the best is a mote in Thy sunshine, 
A spar^k from out Thy -flame. 

Whitman says : — "Let us worship and glorify the world 
and all that is in it." The true religion is to be kind, 
to be kind. "Lift the stone, and thou shalt find me; 
cleave the wood, and there am I." 



CHAPTER III. 

HOME. 

The basis of all society is home ; it is the unit of organi- 
zation, which by its constructive and directive influences 
shapes the affairs of life from atom to immensity. The 
importance of strong, pure, home life cannot be over- 
estimated. The example of filial attachment and unself- 
ish family love, by phenomena and suggestion, conveys 

12 



more practical philosophy to progressive society, than 
all the eclectic and polemic deductions which man has 
inherited or evolved. The American home is the nebular 
institution which vitalizes and intensifies our forces of 
thought and action, wholesomely, or prejudicially ; it needs 
re-enforcement and reconstruction in many details, and as 
trustees of a great past and a glorious present, it behooves 
us to transmit to posterity an integrity of home life, 
which shall challenge the admiration of the world. If 
we love our offspring with all the fervor of parental 
solicitude and passion, we will cheerfully take up our 
manifest obligations in the perpetuity of sound home life 
and deliver to the coming race a legacy for which they 
will call us blessed. While a cynical critic has said that 
posterity has done nothing for us, by our works we shall 
be judged, and we are all sensitive to the verdict of his- 
tory. When we turn over the pages which record the 
crime and oppression of the dark ages, we blush for our 
ancestors, but involuntarily assert that we are now build- 
ing with a deeper and more enduring foundation, which 
shall insure safety, comfort and peace to succeeding gen- 
erations. We die as we grow callous to the world around 
us, and that is a false creed which instructs to forgetful- 
ness of earth, and a direction of the heart and mind 
to a foreign state of existence; such alienation is 
a hastening on to the apathy of old age. We are to 
be taught to live, not to die. We are here, and in this 
place, and it is a most hopeful fact that all the enormous 
falsehood, which forms the burden and shame of litera- 
ture, that earth is a dreary place and life a miserable 
bourne, has never really alienated the great warm heart of 
humanity from the dear old earth, the birthplace and home 
of all the human generations. If the life of a normal, 
useful being can be prolonged to a century, a century and 
a half, or even indefinitely, why not ? This prolongation 
is not expected to come from the elixirs, the osoph'ies 

13 



or ologies which periodically enlist the enthusiasm of 
many susceptible persons, but rather from a correct, regu- 
lar, strong, home life, which simply implies the intelli- 
gent control and proper application of well defined agen- 
cies of human progress. So much is left for each of us 
to do, to find our peers and open with them an honest ex- 
change of our best for their best. The family most easily 
begins this, with its intense and ever-enlarging interests; 
out of true family life comes a neighborhood ; the body 
politic, and the body sympathetic. Family groups of 
Americans are often met with in Europe, in which one 
figure is wanting; this is the father, absent in America, 
working at his business or speculation. These ladies are 
often companionable people who enjoy good hotels, gal- 
leries, music on the public square, and above all, the sen- 
sation of being from home. One feels about them a 
dreary atmosphere of homelessness. As a writer of the 
Potiphar papers, while watching a gay young mother's 
performance in the German, was constrained to think of 
a complaining babe in her nursery, so in having those 
ladies boast of their enjoyments, one cannot help remem- 
bering with commiseration, the wifeless husband, and 
daughterless father at home, who works like an electric 
fan to keep these butterflies in motion. The pride of name 
and race is strong within us. A beautiful child is but 
the crystallization of a beautiful thought ; since we have 
become responsible for its existence, we must not evade 
or ignore the new, serious and manifold obligations which 
its birth involves to us; the building of character is a 
direct and imperative charge upon us, and the framing 
and perpetuity of a sanctuary in whose firm foundations, 
massive walls, fair proportions, and rich adornings, there 
should be blended strength and beauty; is but the ful- 
fillment of a patent and irrevocable law which parent- 
hood assumes and acknowledges. Beauty and strength 
must not be regarded as substitutes for moral princi- 

14 



pies, but rather as its allies, tributaries and vehicle. There 
is an instinctive tendency to move on in the way in which 
one has started, a tendency that is intensified with every 
stage of progress, so that the importance of starting right 
cannot be exaggerated. "Honor thy father and thy 
mother." We would do well to remember that it is a well 
settled principle of psychology that there are many appe- 
tites and emotions that are purely physical, dependent 
upon such vibrations and movements of material fibres, 
or organs, as have their origin in mere animal. The sub- 
jection of the animal to the mental, the material to the 
moral, is largely a matter of home culture in early youth ; 
if at times vigilance and care be released vicious instincts 
are invariably ready to assume control over juvenile ac- 
tions and inclinations. Personality, so far as it is ex- 
hibited by the possession of a material body, is shared by 
all living, organized beings ; yet even in the lowest, it 
consists not in the matter, or form, or appearance of 
that body, but in the evidence which it affords of an ac- 
tive living principle, having definite ends and aims to 
serve. The truth probably is, that there is action and re- 
action, the spirit affecting the growth, and development of 
those organs which exhibit the moral perceptions, and 
the body in turn, by becoming an imperfect and warped 
instrument, cramping and thwarting the spirit. The con- 
sciousness of right and wrong is a personal attribute. It 
is not a mere abstract conception, but always conveys 
with it a sense of personal responsibility. The judgment 
passed upon our own actions, is spontaneous. There is 
an intuitive power, whose exercise cannot be avoided, 
which at once declares that wrong actions are wrong. 
Pile luxury as high as you will, health is better, and the 
body of a well-fed and not overworked ploughman is nine 
times out of ten a better possession than the body of a 
man of fortune, especially if he be at the same time a man 
of pleasure, or selfish aggrandizement. Woman to-day 

15 



is not the slave of man, but his aid, his co-adjutor, tc 
work and labor hand in hand with him, for the glory, 
honor, happiness and perpetuity of humanity, and home 
is a haven of rest, to which all the labor of the day 
tends, which sustains and gives zest to that labor, or at 
least renders it supportable. The literature and life of 
man represents demonstration from existing facts, the 
literature and life of woman implies creation. He is to 
fight and toil, and manfully will he do it; she is to re- 
ceive him by the cheerful hearth when the day's battle is 
over, bathing his brow and binding up the wounds he 
has borne for her, and will bear for her again and again. 
There can be no heroes, unless there are mothers able 
and willing to nurture them in the shadow of the home, 
and to teach them that they may one day witness their 
coronation in the Walhallas of moral victory and perfect 
manhood. Let it be regarded as one of the dictates of 
common sense, as well as consonant with the spirit of 
religion, to lay a broader foundation for marriage than 
mere personal external attractiveness. If people have 
souls, the qualities of their souls should be regarded when 
they contemplate living side by side, as mere physical 
affinity will not last. To any person who has a scin- 
tilla of respect for the parental relationship, and for pa- 
rental affection, there is something positively shocking in 
the thought of taking so important a step as marriage, 
without having at least some conference with parents as 
to its duties and responsibilities. True happiness in mar- 
riage consists not in any foolish fancy of soaring above 
the conditions of earthly living, but in such a wise pro- 
vision for these daily necessities as will leave sentiment 
free to wing its way above them without consciousness 
of dragging the cord. In the animal world, from the 
elephant to the sponge, the division of labor is well de- 
fined in its relations to sex. I challenge the wisdom 
therefore, of women appearing in law, medicine, politics, 

16 



or masculine attire; it is an invasion of man's true field 
of labor, and has been attended with disastrous results 
to the fair sex. So far, in the sciences or in statesman- 
ship, the world has not evolved a woman of conspicuous 
ability. Woman is a failure in business. Thank 
Heaven, she is returning to the fireside, the scene of her 
greatest and most lasting triumphs, the sphere in which 
she holds a practical monopoly, the field in which woman- 
ly virtues and maidenly charms have won the highest 
admiration, and the most potent victories. The so-called 
new woman, that epileptic phase of femininity, which 
cast its meteoric glamor over us a generation ago, ex- 
pired with the last century. I do not know whether she 
was good or bad, but in our grief over the dear departed, 
we have one consolation, that she is dead and likely to 
remain a long time dead. Within a few months the great 
heart of our entire people went out in sorrow, to our kin 
beyond the sea, in the death of Victoria, not because she 
was a queen, but because she was a pure and good woman, 
a paragon of domestic virtues, and an ideal wife and 
mother, whose life and example exalted her sex all the 
world over, without regard to race, color or nationality. 
"To live in the hearts of those we leave behind, is not to 
die." It is a monument eternal ; it is the realization of 
infinite life. The world may be callous to many of the 
niceties which the speed of modern existence does not 
give us time to duly recognize and practice, but a good 
and true woman still holds the highest niche in the es- 
timation of infinite humanity. Women who seek the bub- 
ble reputation of the platform, armed with the brazen 
effrontery which must meet and overcome the tacit con- 
demnation of their own sex, and who rise to the level of 
that blatant rhetorical vaporing, which characterizes the 
efforts of men, whose trade is politics, with, all the odium 
and effluvia implied by that questionable vocation, can 
hardly expect, and certainly do not receive the respect and 

i7 



veneration which the community gladly accords to the 
soft, modest, retiring woman of the Home and the Fire- 
side. The woman of the platform is indeed a pitiable 
object, hard faced, harder voiced, peevish, vindictive, jeal- 
ous, a being unsexed, unhonored and unsung. She still 
faintly pursues the will-o'-the-wisp of suffrage, equality 
and what not, with the flimsy compensation of portraiture 
and biography in yellow journalism, and the centre of the 
stage, where she fondly and proudly thinks she excites 
the envy, but as a matter of fact, only provokes the pity 
of her better-balanced sisters. Out of 17,000,000 women 
in the United States, to their everlasting credit be it said, 
that less than 200,000 have petitioned Congress for the 
right to vote, and in the few States where the franchise 
is granted without sex qualification, women, after a spas- 
modic flicker of enthusiasm, have sensibly allowed the 
privilege to lapse into innocuous desuetude, and I take it, 
after all, that the franchise is a privilege rather than a 
right. The last spasm of this psuedo-emancipated woman 
may now be seen in an agrarian harridan marching 
through Kansas, that land fertile in sun-flowers, sun- 
shine, and damn fools, to the tune of broken glass and 
shattered womanhood. Yet I suppose, that the few fe- 
male enthusiasts still aimlessly struggling in our midst 
claim that chiefly because of lack of support from their 
own sex, they have lost a great cause, but have developed 
a Nation. These derelicts cut from their anchorage in 
the home, floating hopelessly upon a sea of doubt and de- 
spair, with desponding cry send up an eloquent appeal 
to their sisters for a life-boat. A strong woman is needed 
to lead these erring souls back to the fold. Repose is an 
art which we need to cultivate. "We are born in a hurry, 
live in a hurry, die in a hurry, and are driven to Green- 
wood at a trot/ We have not all got identical mental 
and physical equipment ; if we were similarly endowed in 
these attributes, there would be a dead level in humanity, 

18 



which would not alone be monotonous in the extreme, but 
fatal to progressive evolution. Woman consecrates her- 
self to the world, by offering up her life on the altar of 
love to perpetuate the race, and by the vibrations of cheer- 
fulness, joy and hope which she eternally gives out en- 
courages all men to the highest effort and to the loftiest 
ambition; there is hardly a man alive, worthy of the 
name, whose untiring energies are not directed to pleas- 
ing some woman, be she mother, wife, daughter or sweet- 
heart, and the choicest appreciation of life, the medal of 
honor, the double first of fame, the most sought after, 
the most desired, and the most treasured to man, is the 
approbation of woman. Man in action, woman in repose, 
symbolizes the ideal condition of society. In this coun- 
try, noted for its generosity and chivalry to woman, she 
can and does, have everything she asks for, when she 
decisively makes up her mind that she wants it, the suf- 
frage not excepted. The petticoat prophets of discontent 
and disorder who expound the philosophy of the morgue, 
and see only desolation in all environment, because of 
their own moral obliquity are the greatest enemies of 
their sex, but in this aristocracy of democratic ideals, 
where in the last analyses woman is the presiding genius 
and possesses the casting vote in the household, the 
quixotic onslaughts of such morbid missionaries has as 
little effect as a flea upon the back of an elephant. Let 
us applaud, appreciate and encourage the acts of the opu- 
lent so that they may do more. I admit that arrogance 
of wealth often sits insultingly upon the nouveau riche, 
but ostracism by genuine refinement generally regu- 
lates all that. The so-called new woman is largely re- 
sponsible for the plague of vice which confronts us to- 
day; she has wandered from the fireside and led many 
of her sex into ways that are dark and things that are 
peculiar. The harvest of rich degeneracy is ready for the 
sickle; the evasion of maternal responsibilities; the neg- 

19 



lect of children; the domestic servant muddle, as serv- 
ants become precisely what their mistresses make them; 
the abandonment of the individual home for the 
vitiating life of flat, apartment house and hotel, where 
Satan always finds mischief for idle women to do; the 
growth of men's clubs, because, forsooth, men find them 
more attractive than their misnamed homes, and I may 
here say that a club has recently been defined by an 
eminent cleric as "a place where women cease from troub- 
ling, and the wicked are at rest," all emphasize the con- 
clusion that if we really desire to rebuild the family and 
destroy vice, it can only be through the potent instru- 
mentality of a reconstructed, strong, pure, home-life, for 
strong home life is the sworn enemy of vice, the only de- 
stroyer of vice; it forever marks the dead line beyond 
which corrosive vice is unwilling and unable to penetrate. 
Should the brotherhood of men ever be in flower, it must 
and can spring only from the pure, invigorating atmos- 
phere of true Home Life. The 20th Century will be the 
period of woman's greatest energy and usefulness. Many 
zealous missionaries in both sexes are so preoccupied in 
improving others that they can find no time to improve 
themselves. The most impressive sermon to-day is the 
life of truth and righteousness which a person leads, while 
the teachings of the moral and physical inebriates, who by 
misdirected but consistent methods, ineffectually oppose 
the forces of progress and development, which are known 
as respectability and success, represent an innocuous qual- 
ity in our healthy body politic, which we view with 
charity rather than anger. We should all like our social 
arrangements better ordered than they are now. To move 
in this direction, we must ourselves become better; it is 
the only way. There is no other, as all economic ques- 
tions are wholly dominated by moral considerations. The 
canine standard of morals which some amongst us prac- 
tice and advocate, is hardly the beacon light to guide us 



20 



to a regenerated condition. 

A higher appreciation of woman, who is always a thing 
of beauty and a joy forever, must be the polar star of our 
most exalted ideals. To unduly magnify the flaws in 
our animal nature, and urge the removal of all re- 
straint by plunging headlong into the law of uncurbed de- 
sire, means an abandonment of good principles which can 
only result in universal destruction. Social vampires are 
always with us, but like a thief, they only come forth 
into the night of overindulgence ; with the dawn of reason 
and return of moral light, they again seek the mouldy cav- 
erns of sepulchral obscurity. Social cancers are ever in our 
midst, and as we pay for our experience in the coin of indi^ 
vidual suffering, we are bravely passing through the cruci- 
ble of expression to a higher moral and physical plane. Un- 
der the white banner of confidence, whose conspicuous 
standard bearers are the millions of true, virtuous and 
noble women, we are steadily marching on to the beautiful 
city of the Ideal. We may never reach it, like the 
horizon, it ever recedes, but the suburbs are very pleas- 
ant. By more thorough introspection we are having it 
ground down into our souls, that the preservation and 
perpetuity of sterling manhood and womanly virtue are 
more important than the enrichment of a few individuals. 
The sum of universal intelligence accords to a womanly 
woman the highest place in the universe. In the 20th 
Century, we find her more firmly enthroned than ever, 
and the manhood of the age will see to it that her power is 
consolidated, provided she herself elects to give full ex- 
pression to her obligations as a wife and mother, a vo- 
cation which she has always embraced and fulfilled with- 
out regard to the spasmodic repulse which transitory, 
erotic tendencies have from time immemorial unsuccess- 
fully endeavored to tempt her. The duties and activities 
which centre round the hearth will still continue the mag- 
net which draws forth her charms and her virtues. 



21 



Women will cease studying their minds in the glass. I 
have never thought so highly of extreme intellectual 
stimulation in woman, as I have of some other things 
in her life; the soul that lives too much in relations, be- 
comes at last a stranger to its own resources ; we sow 
hurry and reap indigestion. The life of the true woman 
is regular and uniform, less agitated by the passions, the 
businesses, the contentions, the shocks of opinions, and 
the opposition of interests, which divide society and con- 
vulse the world, satisfied to know less and be more, with 
a heart at leisure from itself, to sooth and sympathize, 
The winsome housekeeper in a white apron, is infinitely 
more attractive to a manly man, than the bespectacled 
blue stocking, who knows her Browning and her Omar, 
but is ignorant of the pies which mother used to make. 
In the beautiful words of my friend, Richard Le Galli- 
enne, I would say 
To the Power that made me, and, all undeserving, set me 

in this wonderful world, 
I give thanks for kind and beautiful Women. 
For their sweet faces, I give thanks. 
For their soft voices, I give thanks. 
For their thick bright hair and their little ears, I give 

thanks. 
For their deep eyes and their kind lips and for their little 

feet. 
And for their musical walking, and every other grace and 

mystery and goodness that is theirs ; I give thanks 

to the Power that made me — and gave me eyes to 

see them, and ears to hear them, and hands to touch 

them. 
For Kind and Beautiful Women, O Gracious Unseen 

Power, receive the Thanks of a Man. 



22 



CHAPTER IV. 

EDUCATION. 

Another of the urgent needs of the 20th Century, is 
a better education. The fibre of successful man is largely 
made up of what enters into him during his school days. 
The greatness of a nation depends on the education of its 
people. Education is the expression of what is within 
us developed by co-ordination of sympathetic environ- 
ment ; from this base radiates nearly all that may be called 
good or bad, success or failure, in the evolution of life. 
The public school must be brought up to the requirements 
of the time ; it substantially stands to-day where it stood 
25 years ago, while the child of the 20th Century is the 
most nervous being which has ever set its foot upon this 
earth. The strenuous life which parents lead in the work- 
a-day and social world, inevitably finds manifestation in 
the highly tempered, sensitve and acute organism of the 
offspring. A generation ago unfettered mental expres- 
sion was the universal key-note of education. The studi- 
ous child was often seen with his head swathed in wet 
towels, so intense was his application ; to-day, a large 
measure of repression or diversion is imperative to save 
youth from being a mental and physical wreck at 30. 
The gymnasium is vastly more important in our time than 
the class-room; a sound physical body is the essential of 
the age, so that baths, outdoor sports, calisthenics, and 
abundant open air exercise, are more powerful factors 
in education than mere books, as they alone embody the 
conditions which build the mind up to a receptive and 
absorbent state. The man who will buy Madison Square 
Garden and convert it into a public gymnasium, having 
all the auxiliaries and equipment mentioned, with a lib- 

23 



eral endowment for its maintenance, shall be the soundest 
patron of practical education, and will undoubtedly be 
recorded the greatest philanthropist of the 20th Century ; 
such a gift to the City of New York would forever earn 
the gratitude of society as the wisest recognition of the 
most pressing educational want in our midst. I trust 
one of our new multi-millionaires may see this opportunity 
to imperishable fame, and incalculable value to the com- 
munity. The shortcomings of juvenile existence in city 
life, with its manifold hardships, its grinding environ- 
ment, pernicious influences, and ever-growing incentive to 
moral and physical depravity, emphasizes child-life in the 
metropolis as the most serious sociological problem which 
confronts us. The object lesson contained in the incon- 
trovertible fact that practically all our successful men, 
come from the country, must not be lost upon us. We 
should, therefore, endeavor by a proper recognition of 
certain fixed conditions, to at least palliate the unavoidable 
misfortune of being city bred. The wealthy partially neu- 
tralize this by periodical removal to seaside and subur- 
ban surroundings, but the open book of nature, with its 
grand and instructive lessons, becomes virtually a stran- 
ger to the "other half" ; during the formative period of 
brain and brawn, they hear pretty idylls of the babbling 
brooks, but they never listen to the music of the stream 
and woodland, and thousands grow down into old age 
without having learned the solemn lesson which a sight 
of the ocean conveys. Have you ever witnessed the wild 
joy of the children of the slums when turned loose for 
the first time in green fields and forests? They devour 
everything around them in the expansive possession of 
privileges which the most romantic imagination cannot 
conjure up from window gardening, and parks, however 
useful these may be. Watch the jealous care with which 
the tots guard the faded blossoms, which they are tri- 
umphantly bearing home, with a desire to transplant the 

24 



country to the city; it is indeed that "one touch of na- 
ture that makes the whole world kin." We need more 
public parks and improved tenements, while next to the 
exposition of personal cleanliness, and the full benefits 
of the gymnasium, the campus and the playground, we 
require more than all in our public schools, teachers of 
authority and eminence capable of expounding and ap- 
plying the principles and methods of gastronomy, house- 
hold economics and hygiene. A child should not be ad- 
mitted to a public school until it shows evidence of hav- 
ing been washed ; this compels the initiation and practice 
of certain simple and inexpensive laws in the home, and 
encourages the adoption of cleanly habits, which invari- 
ably cling to youth, and while at first irksome, they soon 
become a voluntary necessity. Wherever there is life, 
there is soap, and where families are unable to purchase 
it, the Department of Charities should distribute it gratu- 
itously. Soap is one of our greatest forces in education 
and civilization. It is of more signal consequence to so- 
ciety that a boy should step out into the world every 
morning clean and wholesome, than that he should learn 
the differentia calculus during the afternoon. Children 
are sent to the class-room at too early an age. Apart from 
what are known as infant prodigies, the physical devel- 
opment of children is so rapid, the renewal of tissue so 
lively and frequent, the vital activities so changeable and 
evolutionary that it is absurd to suppose a normal child 
of six has a decided receptive faculty. Sound and sight 
oft repeated and garnished with fear, may impress cer- 
tain imaginative youth, but the acquisition is purely me- 
chanical and spectacular, having a deleterious, rather 
than beneficial effect, in stunting and retarding true men- 
tal and physical growth. This is a terrific price to pay 
for the grandiloquent, but barren eulogium, which a 
thoughtless teacher flippantly inscribes in a pupil's cer- 
tificate of merit. If children at this age "must be kept 

25 



out of mischief," to use the language which describes 
this process of youthful incarceration, turn them into the 
campus and the gymnasium, and let them do things un- 
der supervision which will suppress only riotous behavior, 
while encouraging individual exertion and expression 
along orderly and natural lines; reward them with sim- 
ple books, if they like them, and they WILL, under such 
circumstances, but don't brutally impose upon them les- 
sons and tasks which they at once hate and fear. You 
cannot teach a grown person, much less a child; nobody 
has ever been taught anything; the mind can only be 
aroused to a certain interest and love for things, and 
youth is proverbially quick to manifest its affection for 
certain subjects and occupations, which it proceeds to 
learn. Attune it to harmonious conditions in an atmos- 
phere of freedom, and it will soon find its level of use- 
fulness and efficiency. The selection of teachers is, per- 
haps, the gravest responsibility of the age; the morals, 
language and deportment of those appointed to mould 
youth in the public schools, fs infinitely of more conse- 
quence than a ninety-nine out of a possible one hundred 
in ology or isms. The financial compensation in the pa- 
tient and harassing profession of a teacher, should be 
fixed at a level which would uniformly attract the most 
accomplished and cultured persons of both sexes, and jus- 
tify them in remaining in the service, with an assurance 
of progressive emolument upon merit, rather than use it 
as a temporary expedient, or stepping stone to other oc- 
cupations where appreciation is more substantial. It 
should be rendered impossible to inject into the Faculty 
of our Public School System, those whose failures or dis- 
appointments in other and more strenuous walks of life, 
frequently cause them to turn to pedagogy, and by be- 
coming dignified pensioners in the halls of education, 
blight, through lack of sympathy, the budding mentality 
of rising youth. The President of the Board of Educa- 

26 



tion, instead of being as we usually find him, a politician 
who has received his appointment in recognition of party 
services, should of all others be a person comprehending 
and consolidating all the talents, attributes, experience, 
and profound knowledge, which natural affinity, long and 
patient study, pre-eminence in his chosen vocation, thor- 
ough familiarity with fundamentals and systems has pe- 
culiarly fitted him for; an expert alike in ele- 
mentary and advanced studies. Such a man as executive 
head of our Department of Education, would, with his 
knowledge of requirement and adjustment, assisted by a 
wide conception of diversified human nature, grade teach- 
ers and pupils alike to the marked advantage of both, and 
to the intellectual enrichment of the whole community. 
Of more importance in our time, than the venerated 3 R's 
are what I might call the 3 T's; Truth, Thoroughness 
and Thrift. Truth in thought, action and expression. 
Thoroughness in belief and in execution. Thrift in 
mental and physical resources. Women seem destined 
to assume larger responsibilities in the education of youth, 
greater obligations are incumbent upon them, because in 
the struggle for existence which the demands of the mate- 
rial world make upon men, the male-parent has less time 
than heretofore in which to study and influence the edu- 
cation of his children. Consequently the presence of the 
mother in the Home, at the Hearth and in the Nursery, 
is of vital importance toward shaping the affections, self- 
respect, obedience and thought of her family. Confi- 
dence, toleration and mutual respect are plants of home 
growth, which when engrafted upon budding youth give 
strength, encouragement and hope to after life. Who can 
forget the reverence of grace before meals and the simple 
family prayers before retiring, which characterized the 
early years of some of us? We often wish now for a 
touch of that vanished hand and the sound of the voice 
that is still. Is there any power sweeter, nobler, than the 

27 



mother's kiss, with a "Good night, dear, God bless you"? It 
was indeed an atmosphere that bred builders of Empire, 
while to-day we breed young men whose serious occupa- 
tion is the profligacy which attends the destruction of fe- 
male virtue. Urge the hundreds and thousands of intelli- 
gent but unemployed women to expound and practice 
the true ends of education, to make better mothers, 
daughters, sisters and citizens, then give to each woman, 
free from home duties, her bread, her mantle and her 
scrip and send her forth among our social pariahs to 
teach them what she herself has learned. Let us use our 
freedom without abusing it, remembering that he is the 
true f reedman that the truth makes free ; he who has 
learned to master himself ; he who by education and study, 
has acquired the quality of self-control, which he will use 
in the clear light of reason for the good of humanity, 
not for the indulgence of pride and passion. The youth 
of our common country need to study the men who made 
the nation. Franklin, Adams, Morris, Hamilton, Wash- 
ington, Jefferson, Clay, Jackson, Webster, Greeley, Lin- 
coln, and others. They need to study the literature of 
the revolution; the epoch in our history most prolific of 
a true national literature. Every class-room in our public 
schools ought to have its gallery of distinguished Ameri- 
cans — a soul-inspiring incentive to high ideals and ster- 
ling" patriotism. It is humiliating to admit that boys who 
are graduated to-day know but little of Paul Jones, Na- 
than Hale, and Paul Revere, while fewer still could write 
a tolerably correct essay upon the minute men of Lexing- 
ton. Contemporary literature and current thought is 
crowded with autobiography of Richard Croker and Tom 
Piatt, while the galaxy of great names which stood at 
the cradle of the Republic is caviare to the general. Quite 
recently I heard a bright boy in business ask if Philadel- 
phia was in Pennsylvania, and I experienced a feeling 
of chagrin, perhaps shame, when having placed before 

38 



a precocious youth several postage stamps, he promptly 
admitted his ignorance of the personality which adorned 
them; in one instance only, did he attempt identification, 
and that was when he pointed to Phil Sheridan's pic- 
ture, as being a portrait of Abraham Lincoln. Within 
a year, in one of our public schools, class of history, the 
composition being Henry VIII. , the following is a precise 
transcript of one of the papers turned in. "King Henry 
Ate was the greatest widower that ever was. He was 
borned at Annie Domino in the year 1066. He had 510 
wives, besides thousands of children. He were first be- 
headed, and afterwards executed. Henry Ate was suc- 
ceeded to the throne by his great-grandmother, the beauti- 
ful Mary Queen of Scots — sometimes called, Lady of 
the Lake, or the Lay of the Last Ministerial." Every boy 
ought to learn that the land of his birth is the greatest 
and best country in the world, and as the shuddering ten- 
ant of the frigid zone boldly declares that happiest spot 
his own, the youth of America should fearlessly assert 
their pride in, and allegiance to their native heath, and 
furthermore, the youth's familiarity with incident and 
achievement should enable them to maintain it. These 
fundamentals are the progenitors of courage and judg- 
ment, without which no race can long uphold its su- 
premacy. There is still growth and organic progress in 
brain corresponding to the growth of intelligence and the 
acquisition of knowledge. We shall not retrograde ; we 
cannot stand still ; consequently, we must march on. The 
heroic sentiment is in the air; the sound of the drum is 
heard in every part of the land, but grim-visaged war 
will smooth his wrinkled front, and instead of mounting 
barbed steeds to fright the souls of fearful adversaries, 
we shall again turn to the arts of peace, and the sword 
will be converted into a plough-share. Our greatest vic- 
tories in the past and in the future must be our social 
and economic triumphs, our betterment of society by the 

29 



practice of manly virtues, and the promotion of personal 
integrity, sympathy, and justice. The universe seems 
indeed to be feeling its way forward in time and space, 
according to certain very lowly and rudimentary, yet 
enormously massive perceptions of what is right and 
wrong, true and false, good and bad, and while there is 
nothing in the totality of its phenomena, as we observe 
them, which leads us to infer that it possesses a high or- 
der of intelligence, it yet inspires us with a certain degree 
of confidence, that these humble but immensely volum- 
inous perceptions, purblind, and impersonal, as they ap- 
pear, will not in the end and on the whole go wrong. Our 
intellects have arisen not from "dirt," but from a sentient 
substance which fills all space and endures through all 
time, indestructible, immortal, the type and symbol of om- 
nipotence. Yesterday, to-day, forever, it is the same ex- 
haustless well-spring of motion, beauty, feeling and life. 
The doubt is not whether there is primarily and ultimately 
a moral code in nature, and in the universe of sentient 
matter, but rather that in our ignorance of the universe, 
we have not as yet fully apprehended what are its real 
ethics. After centuries of dogma and doubt, we are in 
possession of facts which demonstrate the continuous 
evolution of life from the elemental sentience of matter 
to the human intellect itself. While we know much and 
thirst for more, we are as yet only gathering shells on 
the shore of the ocean of truth. A college graduate is 
precisely what he wishes to be, famous in athletics, or 
modest in learning; his predilection for one or the other 
is largely the result of home influence and public school 
training. If a boy spends three years and $30,000 at an 
university, and returns proudly to the parental roof, with 
an abnormal development of biceps, a chrysanthemum 
head, and an album of soubrettes, it is not the fault of 
the college, as the youth is giving expression to the best 
that is in him ; while on the other hand, the fact that 59 

30 



per cent, of the men who preside over our great financial 
and industrial enterprises, are university graduates., 
demonstrates the value of what is called the higher edu- 
cation. Dr. Edward Everett Hale has said, that if you 
should take 12 prize medal men from Harvard and put 
them on a sinking ship, they would all drown through 
inability to construct a raft. Very true. A brief course 
at the Stevens Institute, or Cooper Union switched in be- 
tween the public school and the University would have 
rendered this improbable. The natural method of edu- 
cation is the most effective and practical. Boys should 
handle the tools and know the material as a precedent to 
working at exact mathematical propositions. In the real 
issues of life the scientific often goes down before the 
horse sense of so-called uncultured skill, but it is through 
doing things that we learn. School teachers have too 
many pupils, and but few of them really love their work. 
When the bell rings a sigh of relief is raised, and the 
interest of master and scholar alike terminates. The 
tired feeling in both may be awakened by an adjourn- 
ment to another subject, which, being on the curriculum, 
has to be exploited, whether teacher or pupil like it or 
not. Exams, should be consigned to the limbo of man} 
other effete absudities. There are too many books, and 
not enough things in public school education. The men 
and women who educate most and best through object 
lessons, and respect the already overwrought nerves oi 
pupils, will be honored most, as it is by such natural 
methods that we will properly equip our youth for the 
battle of life, and do away with truancy, trampism, hood- 
lumism and lessen crime by nine-tenths. There is more 
education in a single event than in years of agitation b} 
press and speech. Ordinary heads learn better from deeds 
than from words. It is a pity that Anarchists have so 
seldom planned any event for propaganda purposes, ex 
cept events of violence ; let them pick out the good deeds, 

31 



if any, in their philosophy, and go to the world with then 
as a claim for public consideration and support. Youth 
to-day must be told how men did things, not how they 
could do them. There is too much cant about ideals and 
arguments in elementary education. There are minds 
that are rendered dyspeptic by overfeeding, and there is 
frequently an academic self-consciousness in pedagogy 
which dissipates rather than conserves energy in teacher 
and pupil alike. Work, not words, is the life-blood of 
modern mentality. Education is work, manual, technical, 
mechanical and literal, and while we as a nation possess 
these attributes to a higher degree than any other country 
on earth, we must labor industriously, patiently, untir- 
ingly, to hold and improve a system which has its base 
in enlightenment, efficiency and freedom, the trinity which 
makes sound and successful public life. In this con- 
nection, I trust the day is not far distant when a Cabinet 
officer holding the portfolio of public health and educa- 
tion, will be regarded as the most important functionary 
in the official family of our future Presidents. 



CHAPTER V. 

LABOR. 

I take the broad ground that work is man's greatest 
virtue and indolence his greatest vice. We appear to be 
predestined to earn our bread by the sweat of our brow ; 
and as success is simply the realization of the estimate 
which we place upon ourselves, it is manifest that man 
has within him the economic forces necessary to raise 
him to any level to which he may rationally aspire. All 
properly balanced men recognize this as the latent power, 
the ego of progressive life. We grow through labor to 

32 



rest, and through combat to victory. Work is itself a 
rich source of happiness, and the rewards of honest toil 
are the sweetest compensations of existence. Labor was 
truly said by the ancients to be the price which the gods 
set upon everything worth having, It is infinitely better 
to wear out than to rust out, and there is a dust which 
settles on the heart, as wells as that which rests upon the 
ledge. The real reward of a thing well done, is to have 
done it. The indolent man does not know what it is to 
rest. All hope of progress lies in continuous effort; all 
health, physical and political, is born of activity. Per- 
sonal liberty and opportunity for untrammeled individual 
development are the best products of civilization. Any 
proposition toward social change which jeopardizes 
these will, and deservedly, .sinl^-of its own weight, how- 
ever much promise of mere dmhial comfort it may have 
to recommend it. The so-called exploitation of labor in 
our time is only affected through the- instrumentality of 
the parasitic class, the loafer, the demagogue, and the 
profligate, the leeches of society; and I wish it distinctly 
understood that I set the value of human flesh and 
blood, above any advantage which might accrue to the 
employer from the development of high pressure specu- 
lation. The welfare of this country is based upon the 
sacredness of contract and inviolability of personal prop- 
erty, inasmuch as all prosperity is based upon future con- 
fidence. We must learn to labor and to wait. Man never 
is, but always to be, blest. A cynical philosopher has 
said that genius is a capacity for evading work, but the 
refutation of this dictum is seen in the glow of healthy 
robust labor which animates the faces of honest working- 
men, while the indolent, distorted in visage and body seem 
to be consumed by the deadly poison of their own inac- 
tivity, just in the same way as the evil deeds of anarchy 
wither under a blast of universal execration. Trades- 
unions strike at the liberty of the individual in labor; he 

33 



abdicates his intelligence and merges it into a conglom- 
erate condition which restricts, rather than enlarges his 
scope of effort. Every man in this country has the di- 
vine right to labor in whatsoever occupation his talents 
and inclinations move him, and if my son desires to be 
a carpenter, it is an outrageous infringement upon his 
personal prerogative and individual liberty, for any or- 
ganization to say arbitrarily that he shall not be allowed 
to practice and learn that trade, but instead must become 
a blacksmith, or a decorator, vocations for which he is 
mentally and physically unfit. I cannot perceive the jus- 
tice of a method which raises the indolent and incompe- 
tent to the same level as the able and energetic, or in- 
versely, pulls down the latter to the level of the former. 
Such practices are vicious in the extreme, and destroy 
all incentive to individual excellence by depriving merit 
of the reward and encouragement to which it is entitled. 
I am a firm bliever in the survival of the fittest, as the 
logic of events daily proves the soundness of this law. 
As surely as water finds its level, despite temporary re- 
straint, brains will eventually assert itself, walking dele- 
gates and hoodlums notwithstanding. Every man has an 
inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happi- 
ness, within the limit prescribed by moral and political 
laws in organized society, and I uncompromisingly stand 
for the possession and enjoyment to each individual man 
of the full product of his labor, and thrift. Every man, 
rich or poor, who works and saves is so far the friend of 
his kind, and every man, rich or poor, who is idle, improvi- 
dent and wasteful, is so far the foe of his kind. There is 
a false and absurd expectation amongst the slothful, that 
those who become rich, through industry and ability, must 
necessarily support and encourage those who through in- 
dolence and intemperance are less favored with the world's 
goods. The opprobrium of respectable , and conservative 
is constantly hurled at men who oppose the doctrine "be 

34 



it enacted that everything is abolished," but the fallacy 
of no law, no church, no state, no nothing, has forever 
been exploded by the intelligent mechanic himself, who 
sees in order and organization the only hope for his own 
security and salvation. Hardly any one among humanity's 
benefactors deserves heartier or more lasting benediction 
from the toiling masses than the great Captains of In- 
dustry, like Brassey, Krupp, Pillsbury, and others. We 
are, and must be a distinctly co-operative commonwealth. 
The race of man would perish if we once ceased to help 
each other; the whole fabric of society would fall to 
pieces, unless the cosmic law of harmony prevailed. 
Every man finds himself precisely where he belongs in 
this universe, and gets exactly the reward to which his 
work entitles him. The world pays ioo cents on the dol- 
lar every time, and we cannot overcome the inexorable 
laws of adjustment and equilibrium, try as we may; there 
is no dodging the plumb line of truth in thought or ac- 
tion ; it is the alpha and omega from which we cannot es- 
cape. Our futile efforts to defeat it remind me of Don 
Quixote's assault upon the windmill; we invariably re- 
tire from the unequal contest, having considerably less, 
but knowing a great deal more. Don't rely upon the aid 
of other people; seek success through individual effort. 
A philanthropist has been described as a man who wants 
to know Smith's opinion of what Brown ought to do for 
Jones; don't look forward to, or lean upon such thinly 
veneered pauperism and dependence as this implies. The 
genuine philanthropist of to-day, is the man who creates 
opportunities for honest work; who teaches people how 
to do things, and by example, and incentive, inculcates 
in the masses the qualities of self-reliance and independ- 
ence, and a wholesome self -consciousness in the worker of 
earning his own wages honestly and fairly. After all, 
work is for the worker, and it is highly gratifying to 
know that to-day the producer is getting a larger share of 

35 



the value of his product, taking cost of raw material 
into consideration, than the rewards of labor in this coun- 
try have hitherto shown. In this connection I cannot help 
mentioning the laudable success which has attended the 
efforts of my friend, Elbert Hubbard, at East Aurora, 
who is working out the social and economic problem, 
in a manner which identifies his venture as one of the 
most suggestive and instructive enterprises of the age. 
I should advise any of you who may visit the Pan- 
American Exposition, at Buffalo, to run over and ob- 
serve the system at the Roycroft shop, where two hun- 
dred and fifty country boys and girls are actively em- 
ployed turning out creditable examples of art and handi- 
craft in a veritable hive of industry, all doing the best 
they can because they love the Master and the Work, 
yet embodying the highest ideal which I am at present 
aware of in the strenuous and restful life. The Cooper 
Institute has within a generation fitted over one hundred 
thousand pupils for mechanical and other vocations, and 
many of its graduates to-day stand at the very head of 
their professions in the arts, sciences, and constructive 
occupations, which they follow. As Carlyle says, give 
us, oh, give us, the man who sings at his work, who finds 
a joy in the product of his lands, and his brain. Seek 
out what you can do well, and when you find it. throw 
all your energies into it; patience, persistence and close 
investigation, will make you master of it ; be a continuous 
student; never allow yourself to think that even the 
attainment of an unusual excellence in your trade, closes 
the subject, as it were. While the public knows nothing of 
those long years of labor and preparation, it only sees re- 
sults, and when in the record of events it witnesses ease 
and naturalness of accomplishment.it exclaims : — a genius. 
Many believe that "one crowded hour of glorious life is 
worth a world without a name/' Think of the trials of 
Field, Morse, Bell, Edison, Pupin, and many others; 

36 



at the same time, remember the premium of honor and 
emolument which the community sets upon fruitful per- 
severance. There is nothing new under the sun; noth- 
ing original ; it has all been here from time immemorial ; 
the man who converts waste to public utility is our great- 
est benefactor. There is lots of it lying around unused. 
You have the wand, touch the rock, and call forth into 
the active service of humanity more of the latent forces 
which crowd the universe. It is the rankest egotism to 
say that Columbus discovered America; it was inhabited 
when he landed here ; he only found it for Ferdinand and 
Isabella, but not for the world, as those who were al- 
ready in it knew of its existence; later, when the Puri- 
tan Fathers came along, in giving thanks for the treasures 
unfolded to them, with the impulse of benevolent as- 
similation, they first fell upon their knees and then fell 
upon the Indians. The early settlers had not heard of 
Tolstoi's law of non-resistance, which in its recognition 
of moral suasion as the most potent factor of progress, 
is to-day the philosophic keystone of practical life. There 
is a limit to the legitimate interference of collective opin- 
ion with individual independence, and to find that limit 
and maintain it against encroachment is as indispensable 
to a good condition of human affairs as protection against 
political despotism. All that makes existence valuable 
to any one depends upon the enforcement of restraint 
upon the actions of other people. As all silencing of 
discussion is an assumption of infallibility, so all despotism 
of society over individual means obliteration, and the vir- 
tual annihilation of progress. Government is conserva- 
tion of individual interests. Government in the past 
was derived from conquest or inheritance; to-day, it is 
authority delegated by the people. In political, commer- 
cial and philosophical theories, as well as in persons, suc- 
cess discloses faults and infirmities, which failure might 
have concealed from observation. The opportunity is al- 

37 



ways here, but it is the exceptional man who sees and 
avails of it. Every army officer in the Philippines, be- 
lieved in the existence of Aguinaldo, but Funston cap- 
tured him, and however the act may be regarded, it was 
splendid in conception and daring in execution ; yet while 
it may have been magnificent, I do not think it was war. 
There was, however, in it a lofty sense of duty and cour- 
age which in the abstract is one of the most inspiring char- 
acteristics of our race ; such achievements are happily 
tempered by the belief that the bravest are the tenderest. 
The moral laws of society are not bad, but not obeyed; 
the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exer- 
cised over any member of a civilized community against 
his will, is to prevent harm to others. In the part which 
merely concerns himself, his independence is of right ab- 
solute over himself ; over his own body and mind, the in- 
dividual is sovereign. I regard utility as the ultimate 
appeal on all ethical questions, but it must be utility in 
the largest sense, grounded on the permanent interests of 
man as a progressive being. Despotism is a legitimate 
mode of government in dealing 1 with barbarians, provided 
the end be their improvement and the means justified by 
actually effecting that end. The only freedom which de- 
serves the name is that of pursuing our own good in our 
own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others 
of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it. The energies 
of moral repression have been wielded more strenuously 
against divergence from the reigning opinion in self- 
regarding than even in social matters. Despotism is a 
hateful thing, whether it springs from what is called 
''Divine" right, or whether it is built on the jugglery of 
a plebescite. Under manhood suffrage the candidate of 
the mob becomes king. Equally so, life without industry 
is guilt; industry without art is brutality. Why not re- 
member that although the evolutionists tell us where we 
came from, and the theologians inform us where we 

38 



are going to, yet the only thing we are really sure of is 
that we are here, and must make the best of it. The lan- 
guage, literature and philosophy of woe is a most humili- 
ating and sickly phenomena. Let us cut loose from it. 
Let us teach people as much as we can to enjoy, and 
they will learn for themselves to sympathize. Let us 
give these lessons in a brave, vivacious note, instead of 
whining over the circumstances in which we are placed. 
This is an age of energy, and as the idle brain is the 
workshop of the devil, it behooves us to be up and doing. 
With all the competition that is going on between na- 
tions, no nation is going to be ruined or driven out of 
business ; no people can stop work, and every people can 
earn enough by work to do more than sustain life. Re- 
adjustments are going on, and the nations, like individ- 
uals, that most readily adjust themselves to the changed 
conditions, will fare the best. In these processes of re- 
adjustment, there is a great deal of individual and na- 
tional loss, but there is little disaster. The encouraging 
thing is, that while competition is driving down the cost 
of production, it is not driving down the rewards of hu- 
man industry, as the highest wages ever paid in the Unit- 
ed States are being earned and paid to-day. The Savings 
Bank deposits show that the workman is becoming pur 
greatest capitalist, as his surplus earnings are creating 
and vitalizing many new and important industries. Suc- 
cess in the race is won by continual improvement, and not 
by lowering the standard of living, which with decreased 
cost of production has very decidedly advanced within a 
decade. The keynote of the age is a splendid optimism ; 
we have had a great start; our foundation is solid; in 
natural resources we are rich beyond the dreams of 
avarice ; we are ever pressing on to the goal of our mani- 
fest destiny, which is that the English language shall be 
the spoken word of the universe, and the English speak- 
ing race the arbiter of the world's affairs. Let me state 

39 



here that no business, commercial or political, can suc- 
ceed or survive, which fails to extend the due measure 
of recognition to those who make it. A mercantile house 
which enriches itself by robbing its employees must fail 
ignominiously. A nation which pilfers the people 
through the corruption of a political party, sows the 
wind and must reap the whirlwind. In our time, we 
have witnessed the accumulation of many of the greatest 
fortunes which the world has ever recorded, and labor 
is deservedly proud of the fact that the great masters of 
industry have sprung directly from her ranks. Hunting- 
ton, Carnegie, Rockefeller, and others toiled at the bench, 
in the fields, or in the counting rooms. Schwab was a 
clerk in a grocery store within twenty years, and to-day 
is at the head of the greatest industrial combination in 
the world. These giants in the realm of strong individual- 
ity are nothing but successful working men, a noble in- 
centive to others, and as they cannot forever direct these 
activities, the very clerks of to-day must necessarily be 
the bosses of to-morrow. Within the memory of most 
of us, Vreeland worked on a night gravel car, serving his 
practical apprenticeship, as it were, for the vast responsi- 
bilities over which he now so capably presides. In this 
rapidly progressive commonwealth, the opportunity for 
the man who can, is crowding upon him everywhere. Our 
advancing civilization, with its multifarious necessities, 
opens a wide path to energy and intelligence, and the 
rewards are always commensurate with the achievement. 
I am aware that in certain sections of our heterogeneous 
society, nothing antagonizes like success, but the breath 
of slander, or the savage envy of indolent dunces cannot 
turn aside the irrepressible ego of the American people. 
Every loafer is a gambler and a fatalist ; he prefers manna 
to hard earned bread, and believes absolutely in the mis- 
sion of Heaven to provide for him ; he stakes his patience 
against hunger and thirst and adversity, and the wheel 

40 



invariably comes round to him. The poor man of New 
York is the honest clerk who strives to pay his way; 
who starves that his children may be clothed; who de- 
nies himself that his wife may have medicine. For him 
neither New York nor any other city has devised a self- 
respecting and workable charity. Civilization has yet to 
learn how to disburse charity to the really deserving. I 
wish many of our merchant princes, who endow colleges, 
build churches and donate libraries, would look more 
closely into the condition of their own immediate em- 
ployees, and by acquiring an intimate knowledge of 
the lives and wants of those around and beneath them, 
would unostentatiously dispense a portion of their bur- 
densome surplus where I think it would do the most 
good, but perhaps occupy less space in the public prints. 
Remember that the present condition of society, as a 
whole, is the best we are aware of, and it is our duty to 
support and maintain it until something better is offered. 
The self-confessed incompetents in our midst are an in- 
tegral and valuable part of the universe; they are the 
vultures who follow the army of labor, or the ants who 
become the scavengers of the economic body. We can't 
get on without them; they fill a most useful place in our 
sociological sphere, exemplifying the law of contrast, 
which is so instructive, and illustrating the forces of ac- 
tion, which are alike stimulating. They invoke the ghost 
of a so-called liberalism, which they exorcise at will, and 
find in it the panacea for all their ills, but it is a false 
prophet masquerading as freedom; its thin veneer is 
penetrable to the most ordinary understanding, and when 
the fetish stands forth in its true colors, we find only 
the negative agency of unbridled licentiousness and brutal 
physical force, after experiencing a healthy injection of 
positive and constructive life in the sunlight of modern 
progress; this harmless, but hideous nightmare of latter 
day ism and ology, wrapped in its scarlet mantle and sul- 

4* 



phurous odor, subsides again into harmless imbecility. 
There is no excellence per se in poverty ; rags are no rec- 
ommendation, and all employers are not rapacious and 
high handed, any more than all poor men are virtuous. 
My heart goes out to the man who does his work when the 
boss is away, as well as when he is at home. The great- 
ness of the United States rests upon the loyal industry 
of her working men. The tyranny of trades-unionism 
in Great Britain has lost to England her mercantile su- 
premacy, and delivered it to us. In an effort to grant 
freedom she forged a manacle for herself; she sought 
to legislate out of the need of work, and we find her, as 
a consequence, legislating herself out of business. The 
lesson of doing as little as possible within the shortest con- 
ceivable hours of labor, and obtaining the highest price 
for it should not be lost upon us; it is a false economic 
principle, which must in the end obliterate any people 
from the field of active and profitable industrial opera- 
tions. There is no such thing as over-production; we 
need have no fear of that ; the wants of the human fam- 
ily have never been satisfied ; there may be an insufficient 
production of certain commodities which ordinarily ex- 
change for other products and thereby cause a tem- 
porary stagnation in the avenues of trade. If the whole 
army of labor would produce as much as it can, and as 
well as it can, many things which are now miscalled, 
luxuries, would, through the medium of local and inter- 
national barter, be readily brought within the reach of 
those who in a measure suffer for need of them, because 
of indifferent quality, limited quantity, diminished hours 
and relatively excessive wages, all the conditions which 
reduce results and enhance cost of production, and in- 
evitably narrow the consumptive market. What we need 
in labor is a higher standard of duty, a better moral ef- 
fort. The power of capital will be reduced as the power 
of public opinion will be increased by the loyalty and 

42 



efficiency of the working man. When discussing certain 
industrial combinations there appears to be a radical mis- 
apprehension in regard to the principle and application of 
many so-called trusts. A monopoly, as I understand it, 
is the sole power of dealing in goods, either by purchasing 
all in the market, or by a license from the Government 
conferring the exclusive sale. A consolidation of manu- 
facturing interests is not necessarily a monopoly; while 
such a unification may bring great financial returns to 
the original owners, to continue production, the area of 
consumption must not only be maintained, but increased, 
by holding the price of the product at lowest possible 
point. The United States Steel corporation, for exam- 
ple, is not a monopoly. While its output represents, per- 
haps 60 per cent, of the entire product in the United States, 
one of its very first moves has been to reduce prices of 
their product along entire line. We are all familiar with 
the history of the Standard Oil Company, which in thirty 
years has reduced price to consumers 92 per cent., and it 
is eminently to the credit of that prosperous corporation 
that it has never had a strike, because its army of em- 
ployees is the best paid, most contented, loyal and efficient 
corps in the ranks of American labor, while its surplus 
profits in seeking investment, is reinvigorating and cre- 
ating many languishing and new industries in our midst, 
which constantly open up fresh fields, occupations and 
employment to our energetic workers. The improve- 
ments and economies effected by the Pittsburgh ironmas- 
ters have within a generation reduced the price of steel 
rails 88 per cent., while the number of men employed in 
the industry has risen within the same period from a 
few thousands to half a million, thus enabling us to en- 
ter and hold the markets of the world, with the accruing 
emoluments to our skilled and unskilled labor. There 
can be no greater injury to the cause of labor than that 
arising from movements which aim to destroy both fair 

43 



treatment and loyalty. Trades-unions should remember 
that they only control, supply; demand is beyond the 
power of their jurisdiction, and its inactivity or paralysis 
destroys the market to the greatest detriment of labor, 
which of the two forces is least able to withstand a pro- 
longed strain. Absolute equality of rights cannot be and 
should not be, for all men are equal only in the grave. 
The security to each individual of the benefits of free com- 
petition is the only equality men can ask or secure. The 
freedom which a man cannot hold is not freedom, but 
rather a mere license which others can take away from 
him. When considering the factors of organic evolu- 
tion we are impressed with the belief that one of the great- 
est needs of our times is the need of social vitality. Be- 
cause wealth and poverty are found together it does not 
follow that one is the cause of the other. If we wish 
to develop a thinking people, we must first make a work- 
ing people; through the cunning of the hand, the mind 
is called upon to act. The ideal condition for such hu- 
man nature is a place easy to enter at the bottom and 
always open at the top. Such, I am glad to say, is the 
field of American labor to-day. Intensified production 
contains no element tending to crush and oppose the 
humble worker ; the present system holds out the hand to 
bring up the lower to a still loftier plane, instead of 
dragging down the better to the dead level of mediocrity. 
It is noticeable that vehement champions of the labor 
cause who have been zealous to right the wrongs of the 
working man through coercion, have soon after, in 
many instances, been found in the field as candidates for 
political office. The ills of society are the harvest of de- 
fective character; if ignorance and laziness were not fol- 
lowed by want, they would never be outgrown. Be- 
neath all the seeming security which does, and should 
enlist our hearty sympathy, natural penalties are kindly. 
But intelligent philanthropy will address itself to the 

44 



underlying causes. Sentimentalism cannot alter the plan 
of evolutionary progress ; it is cruelty to assure men that 
all their troubles are external. To misplace the fault 
is to be unkind to the individual and to society. If one 
leans upon anything outside of his own talents and pow- 
ers, he is leaning down hill. The charity to bestow is 
industrial education, self-help, faithfulness, honor, love, 
character. The theory that production is solely the re- 
sult of physical labor, as urged by some socialistic agi- 
tators, is unmitigated fallacy. A high order of executive 
talent is more rare than a corresponding quality of mus- 
cle, and the work of muscle depends largely upon the 
quality of mind mixed with it. This is the great desid- 
eratum in co-operative production, which gives the best 
results, a harmonious and inter-dependent union of em- 
ployer and employee toward a common end. Lowell says, 
"No man is born into this world whose work is not born 
with him, there is always work and tools to work 
with for those who will, and blessed are the horny hands 
of toil!" Blessed is that man who has found his work. 
The brave man carves out his fortune, and every man is 
the son of his own works. To survive and progress, we 
must ever jealously guard and conserve the prosperity 
of the agricultural and industrial classes. We must in 
this country overcome the possibility which Goldsmith 
pathetically described : 

"III fares the land to hastening ills a prey, 

Where wealth accumulates and men decay — 
Princes and lords may flourish and may fade — 
A breath can make them, as a breath hath made; 
But a bold peasantry, their country's pride, 
When once destroyed — can never be supplied." 

Having thus crudely outlined for you the essential com- 
ponents which, in my opinion, enter into the great need 
of the 20th Century, I shall leave you to develop the man. 

45 



iii! 

■ - -- - ■■■ ■ II II 

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kBiRiSfi* 0F CONGRESS 



027 273 617 



